Soul Surfer is an American surfing movie based on a true story and was released in April 2011 in about 2000 theaters across USA and Canada. The movie centers on Bethany Hamilton in the year 2003, who lives in Kaual in Hawaii with her parents - Tom and Cheri and brothers - Timmy and Noah. All the members of her family are surfers and even her best friend Alana Blanchard is a surfer.

She enters a competition with her friend Alana by skipping a Church initiated mission. She has been asked to come on by a youth minister Sarah Hill. She takes first place in the surfing competition and her friend Sarah takes third place. Malina Birch takes second place and turns resentful of Bethany. That night Bethany sneaks out to go night-surfing with Alana, her father and her brother. Bethany goes out into the water and as she slowly wades through it with her left arm, a tiger shark comes and bites off her arm close to her shoulder. They then all get out of the water and Bethany is rushed to the hospital.

Bethany’s father is also in the hospital awaiting knee surgery. The doctors are rushed to operate as her condition is critical with her losing about 60% of her blood. She miraculously survives and comes through.

Bethany is disqualified from the Rip Curl photo shoot due to her injury but Rip Curl renders support by giving her a cosmetically perfect prosthetic arm that has joints and even bends. She however rejects it as she learns that this will not help her surf. Tom and Cheri are not resentful on Alana’s family and Cheri tells Holt that she is grateful for the quick response that he took in the situation and that helped save Bethany’s life.

Bethany gets back to surfing after her recuperation and she has many difficulties but she perseveres even harder. She gets into the competition but the Malina wins. She loses heart in competitive surfing and takes leave for some time. During this time she sees the Indian Ocean Earthquake and tsunami in 2004 and is moved to join Sarah Hill on a Church initiated mission trip to Thailand, there she uses her surfboard skills to help the people overcome their fear and trauma of the waters. This inspires her, building her confidence to make a comeback into the competitive surfing. She enters a competition and until catching the final wave, Bethany is still chasing third place but her instincts help her make the best of a final swell and performs brilliantly. However as the time is up, the judges blow the horn and that waves’ is not counted. Malina however invites her to share first place with her, as she puts her differences aside.

When Bethany is finally interviewed and asked as to what would she do if she could undo the loss of her arm, she answered that she would prefer her current conditions as she was able to embrace more people this way than she did when she had both arms